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then. I’m a businessman, much more in those days than
now, I wanted to see some tangible progress, it should have
all been moving to some conclusion or at least should have
been moving on in some way according to the rules. Instead
of which there were just more hearings, and most of them
went through the same things anyway; I had all the answers
off pat like in a church service; there were messengers from
the court coming to me at work several times a week, or
they came to me at home or anywhere else they could find
me; and that was very disturbing of course (but at least now
things are better in that respect, it’s much less disturbing
when they contact you by telephone), and rumours about
my trial even started to spread among some of the people I
do business with, and especially my relations, so I was being
made to suffer in many different ways but there was still not
the slightest sign that even the first hearing would take place
soon. So I went to the lawyer and complained about it. He
explained it all to me at length, but refused to do anything I
asked for, no-one has any influence on the way the trial pro-
ceeds, he said, to try and insist on it in any of the documents
submitted like I was asking was simply unheard of and
would do harm to both him and me. I thought to myself:
What this lawyer can’t or won’t do another lawyer will. So I
looked round for other lawyers. And before you say any-
thing: none of them asked for a definite date for the main
trial and none of them got one, and anyway, apart form one
exception which I’ll talk about in a minute, it really is im-
possible, that’s one thing this lawyer didn’t mislead me
about; but besides, I had no reason to regret turning to oth-

1 The Trial